Surfer Banter: Boycott of oil mega-corporation justified

Jesse MortonOnline Editor

Published Wednesday, August 03, 2005

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"The numbers killed (by the crude oil emitted by the Valdez) ranged from thousands of marine mammals, including otters, seals and orcas, to hundreds of thousands of sea birds, such as murres and ducks (pictured here), to millions of fish," reported The Independent in January. Photo courtesy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council

The boycott of ExxonMobil, lead by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, is righteous and should be practiced by advocates and patrons of our oceans.

The facts inspiring the boycott are contained in a 23-page report by Alison Cassady, research director for PIRG. Two of the four reasons for the campaign should stir the emotions of anyone who feels any affinity towards the ocean and aquatic life.

While mainstream science bolsters its stance that global warming is killing reefs, disrupting thermohaline circulation, and uprooting and sometimes killing entire fish populations, which must search for cooler habitats as their home waters are microwaved like a Lean Cuisine (Science, Vol 308, May 13, 2005), ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, does more than just cover its eyes and ears. It hires people to pose as experts and denounce the findings of long-term scientific research. It launches a misinformation campaign designed to create the illusion that there is debate and disunity within the scientific community on the subject of global warming.

Second, ExxonMobil is fervidly appealing a ruling that requires it to pay reparations to the human victims and the human representatives of the animal victims of America's worst oil spill.

While it rakes in unparalleled profits, the offspring of oligarch Rockefeller's Standard Oil simply refuses to shell out the compensation owed to an ecosystem that is still traumatized from swallowing roughly 125 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of crude oil that was barfed up by the Valdez after it drunkenly plowed into a charted reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

As horrific as that disaster was, it will be dwarfed by what possibly lays in wait.

On Monday, the AP floated a story on how this year is going into the record books as the worst to date for Phytoplankton in the Pacific. Warmer waters, in some cases as much as six degrees above normal, have accelerated the death rate of the microscopic plant that is eaten by microscopic animals that are the base of the ocean's entire food web.

Now scientists studying the region are picking up the pieces, tabulating the deaths and doing the math. Most agree that were this phenomenon to persist, the health of the global ecosystem could plummet.

Indeed, if ever there was a time when the world needed to unite in an effort to prevent the further warming of our oceans, it is now. And if ever there was a company working to prevent even the semblance of unity in this effort, it is ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil's idea of science

While BP, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch/Shell all officially recognize that global warming is real and vehicle exhaust is contributing to the problem, ExxonMobil continues to deny that the climate change scientists are referring to as global warming is the result of human activities. This alone would be bad enough were Exxon to cease funding bunk science to create the illusion of controversy over the facts surrounding climate change.

"Greenpeace has identified about 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global warming or have affiliated with a small group of climate 'naysayers' who continue to do so," PIRG reported. "In 2004, ExxonMobil gave $1.9 million to 26 organizations specifically to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming; this is more than double the amount given to organizations in 2003 in grants earmarked for global warming work.

"Between 1998 and 2004, ExxonMobil gave more than $15 million to organizations working to influence global warming policy. Many of the recipients of funding earmarked for work on global warming were members of Cooler Heads Coalition, formed in 1997 "to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis," the report states.

For that kind of money, these supposedly scientific organizations and think tanks don't just sit on their hands, they do what they are paid to do. They act as attack dogs, brave and stupid, and strike at the likes of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment of 2004.

"Compiled by some 300 scientists, the ACIA study warned that the Arctic is warming rapidly and that this warming threatens to push Arctic species toward extinction," PIRG reported. "Several think tanks and other institutions funded by ExxonMobil responded within hours to debunk this report, researched over four years.

"Steven Milloy, who receives funding from ExxonMobil and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, wrote a column for FoxNews.com called 'Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice,'" the report states. "James McCarthy, a Harvard biological oceanographer and lead author of the ACIA report, dismissed Milloy's column as contradicting hundreds of scientific papers."

To build prominence for the findings of its pseudo science, Exxon has bought some politicians and put them to work.

According to PIRG, the oil company contributed $117,000 to President Bush's reelection campaign, and roughly $230,000 to the election campaigns of a handful of senators and representatives from Texas and Alaska.

To further manipulate the politicians it bought, Exxon employs a team of lobbyists. "Since 2000, the company has spent almost $37 million on lobbyists to push its agenda on Capitol Hill, including $7.7 million in 2004 alone," PIRG reports.

On the Web:

For the complete report by PIRG, go to www.uspirg.org

The politicians and lobbyists have earned their keep. The Bush administration acquiesced to the suggestions listed in a 2002 confidential memo from Exxon demanding that the reappointment of Dr. Robert Watson to the chair of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chang be blocked. Watson had made the mistake of being an "outspoken critic" of the U.S.'s policy on global warming.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil had an all-purpose backstage pass to some critical meetings wherein said policy was partially forged.

"ExxonMobil was the only oil company to meet with the State Department in 2001 on the subject of global warming and the Kyoto treaty," PIRG reported. "In briefing papers given to Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. undersecretary for global affairs in the State Department thanks ExxonMobil executives for the company's 'active involvement' and seeks its advice on which globabl warming policies the company might find acceptable."

The American public should rest assured that science is guiding its government's environmental policy. But it is the "science" invented by think tanks and institutions hired strictly for the purpose of generating huge profits for ExxonMobil.

It is that exact same branch of pseudo science that is used to rationalize ExxonMobile's attempt to wriggle free from paying $4.5 billion in reparations for the continuing ecological disaster created by the Valdez.

15 years of toxic accumulation

The government holds that 11 million gallons of oil poured into the Prince William Sound when the Valdez plowed into the Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989. Several NGOs put the number closer to 30 million.

This was the largest and worst oil spill in the history of America. Aside from Chernobyl, Hiroshima and a handful of other war-related disasters, it is a strong contender for the world championship of ecological disasters.

It is old news and ExxonMobil claims it has been suitably punished for permanently altering the global ecosystem.

"ExxonMobil paid $300 million immediately to more than 11,000 Alaskans and businesses(.) In addition, the company paid $2.2 billioin to clean up Prince William Sound and $1 billion in settlements with the state and federal governments," PIRG reported.

But the mega-corporation is appealing a 1994 court ruling ordering it "to pay $4-5 billion in punitive damages to fisherman, Alaskan Natives, and others injured by the oil spill," the report states.

By withholding payment while awaiting appeals court to work its excruciatingly slow magic, ExxonMobil is saving a fortune, as the value of the dollar drops steadily.

Despite what ExxonMobil scientists report, crude oil toxins are currently working their way through the top predators in the ecosystem, according to a January report floated by The Independent (London).

"Scientific studies have shown that an estimated 50-100 tons of oil remains in Prince William Sound. As it breaks down, it accumulates in the food chain from mussel beds, clams and whelks to worms, crabs and fish and then to mammals," The Independent reported.

PIRG reports similar findings.

"Chronic exposure to oil has increased wildlife mortality and slowed the recovery rate for many species most affected by the spill," it reports. "Populations of six different species of animals --the common loon, cormorants (three species), harbor seals, harlequin duck, pacific herring, and pigeon guillemot-- had shown little or no improvement since the spill injuries occurred."

Inevitably, $4.9 billion is a small price to pay for destroying an ecosystem, especially when this amount is set against the $25.3 billion ExxonMobil reportedly earned in 2004 alone.

For its bunk science and its struggle against the reparations it should have paid long ago, ExxonMobile should be boycotted. Several other reasons exist, including ExxonMobil's spearheading of the effort to open the Alaska National Wilderness Reserve to oil drilling.

In his book "Hegemony or Survival," Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT, cynically suggests that liberty in America has been reduced to the freedom to choose between commodities. That being the case, we must exercise this freedom to enact positive change whenever we can. Start today by not giving any more of your hard-earned money to ExxonMobil.